196 
Short on the Botany of Illinois. 
villosus, (blackberry,) Ribes rotundifolinm, called Illinois goose¬ 
berry, of which the fruit, though spinous,makes a delicious tart; 
together with various species of wild roses, grape-vines, &c. 
Though not properly falling within the compass of this 
communication, the object of which has been to give some 
account of the autumnal botany of the prairies, yet before I 
close it, I will venture to add a few remarks on the forest 
trees of Illinois. These, in the main, do not differ from the 
productions of similar districts in the timbered lands of Indi¬ 
ana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. In Illinois, the richest 
groves, interspersed through the prairies, are constituted 
mainly of the same kind of trees which indicate the best soils 
generally in the Western States, as black walnut, hickories, 
hackberry, ( Cellis crassifolia ,) sugar-maple, pawpaw, ( Porcelia 
triloba ,) &c. The thinner lands are clothed chiefly with 
oaks of various species, hickories and gums, ( Liquidambar 
We thought, too, at first, that we were relieving our horses, yrro hac 
vice at least, of their torturing assailants; but a very little observation soon 
made it manifest that where we killed one, a dozen more keen and insa¬ 
tiable would arrive. So there was no way of stopping with a view to 
relief—the gauntlet had to be run, and the sooner it was over the better. 
Indeed, an old prairie traveler afterwards told us, in answer to our won¬ 
der, expressed at the naked condition of his horses, that the worse the 
flies were the more rapidly he drove. Such a course, however, appear¬ 
ed to us inhuman; and our horses, good and true though they were ‘as 
ever looked through a halter,’ gave evidences that they were not used to 
such leeching; and we were truly glad when, nine or ten miles on our 
road, a resting-place presented itself on the skirts of a forest. It is a 
most fortunate circumstance that these flies do not infect the woodlands, 
though immediately adjoining their haunts in the tall, thick herbage of 
the prairies; and we were told that so disgusted are they with the odor 
of a stable, they will not pursue an animal that takes shelter in one, how¬ 
ever rudely and openly constructed of common round logs, without any 
chinking of its various apertures. From my recollection of Western 
stables generally, I think this fly evinces a great deal of good sense in 
avoiding them. It is, indeed, a clean, bright, and beautiful insect, of 
variegated green-and-golden burnish, about the size of, and not unlike the 
Spanish blistering fly.”— MSS. Notes on a Tour through Illinois, by J. 
CnEVES Short. 
